OLD Kink’s always willing to preach, and hand out wise counsel and teach; but ask him for aid when you’re hungry and frayed, and he’ll stick to his wad like a leech. He’s handy with proverb and text to comfort the needy and vexed; but when there’s a plan to feed indigent man, old Kink never seems to get next. He’ll help out the widow with psalms, and pray for her fatherless lambs; but he never would try to bring joy to her eye with codfish and sauerkraut and hams. On Sunday he joins in the hymn, and makes the responses with vim; when they pass round the box for the worshipers’ rocks, his gift is exceedingly slim. He thinks he is fooling the Lord and is sure of a princely reward when to heaven he goes at this life’s journey’s close—with which view I am not in accord. For the Lord, he is wise to gold bricks, and the humbug who crosses the Styx will have to be sharp if he captures a harp; St. Peter will say to him, “Nix!” They size up a man nearly right when he comes to the portals of light; and no stingy old fraud ever hornswoggled God or put on a robe snowy white.
BACKBONE
FROM Yuba Dam to Yonkers the man of backbone conquers, where spineless critters fail; all obstacles o’ercoming, he goes along a-humming, and gathers fame and kale. No ghosts of failure haunt him, no grisly bogies daunt him or make his spirits low; you’ll find him scratching gravel wherever you may travel, from Butte to Broken Bow. From Winnipeg to Wooster you’ll see this cheerful rooster, this model to all men; undaunted by reverses he wastes no time in curses, but digs right in again. His face is always shining though others be repining; you cannot keep him down; his trail is always smoking while cheaper men are croaking about the old dead town. From Humboldt to Hoboken he leaves his sign and token in buildings high and grand; in factories that flourish, in industries that nourish a tired, anaemic land. He brings the work to toilers and fills with bread and broilers their trusty dinner pails; he keeps the ripsaw ripping, the big triphammer tripping, the workman driving nails. All honor to his noblets! We drink to him in goblets of grapejuice rich and red—the man of spine and gizzard who hustles like a blizzard and simply won’t be dead!
THE POORHOUSE
THE poorhouse, naked, grim, and bare, stands in a valley low; and most of us are headed there as fast as we can go. The paupers sit behind the gate, a solemn thing to see, and there all patiently they wait, they wait for you and me. We come, we come, O sad-eyed wrecks, we’re coming with a will! We’re all in debt up to our necks, and going deeper still! We’re buying things we can’t afford, and mock the old-time way of salting down a little hoard against the rainy day! No more afoot the poor man roams; in gorgeous car he scoots; we’ve mortgages upon our homes, our furniture, our boots. We’ve banished all the ancient cares, we paint the country red, we live like drunken millionaires, and never look ahead. The paupers, on the poorhouse lawn, are waiting in a group; they know we’ll all be there anon, to share their cabbage soup; they see us in our costly garb, and say: “Their course is brief; we see the harbingers that harb of bankruptcy and grief.” Be patient, paupers, for a span, ye friendless men and dames! We’re coming, blithely as we can, to join you in your games!